When I heard the door slam shut, I stopped typing. In the six months since my girlfriend Debra and I moved in together, I had learned that you could tell what kind of day she had just by listening to the sounds she made in the first thirty seconds after she got home. So I saved the piece I was writing, sat still at my desk and listened.

The slammed door didn't mean much in itself. In fact, it might even bode well for me. On many previous occasions, after that slamming sound, I had heard the clicking of Deb's heels across the apartment as she strutted her way to...